Micro-simulating child poverty in 2010 and 2020

Please note: this commentary was revised on 24 February 2009 to remove the incorrect assertion in the summary and conclusion that a bad recession would worsen the combined material deprivation and relative income measure of child poverty. Table 3 shows the opposite to be the case.

The 2008 Pre-Budget Report (PBR) said that 'the Government will take stock of progress towards its 2010 and 2020 child poverty target in the [2009] Budget'. As background to that exercise, this paper updates our previous analysis of the prospects for child poverty in the UK in 2010-11 and 2020-21.